It is known in the prior art to have voice recognition systems that incorporate a speech synthesizer chip technology, but none of the teachings incorporate the technology of the present invention. Rather, the prior art speech recognition systems are not controlled by the supplied software as in the present invention where personalization of the pre-loaded commands are permitted, but not by function keys or cursor controls connected to the applications program that resides in the computer's RAM memory at all times. Further, the prior art discloses transferring data from the host computer to the speech recognition chip through the keyboard port, while the present invention only sends a key press entry that is assigned to the newly spoken and recorded command to the host computer's keyboard port, with the actual data being sent and received by the host computer's data bus (internal ISA device); the serial port (COM RS-232C device), the parallel port (parallel port device); and the USB port (USB device).
The prior art patents that show systems operating in response to voice commands are as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,569 to Nakano et el. is directed towards a computer controlled by voice input, wherein the voice control device is completely incorporated into a host computer so that each keyword corresponding to a start address of a program among a plurality of programs stored in memory can be specified by a voice input by utilizing digital codes formed from complex circuitry involving a computation section, speech recognition start control section, data table of storage contents stored in a program memory, speech synthesis data storage section, and an operator guidance control section. This system does not disclose a microcontroller and a speech recognition chip that connects to a keyboard and a host computer, for sending scan codes to the host computer's keyboard port based on speech recognition and for disconnecting and reconnecting the keyboard from the serial data path by switch means when sending the scan codes, while the software loaded into the host computer sends/receives commands and data through the host computer's data bus.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,704,696 to Reimer et al. relates to a voice control system that controls the execution of a video game by suspending the game during the entire voice input and recognition intervals. This is accomplished by having the microphone outputs connected to either a clipping circuit or a filter having a narrow bandpass filter connected to a peak connector, and then connected to a microprocessor. However, the present speech recognition system does not suspend the game while the voice commands undergo filtering means.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,016 to Hansen relates to a voice control system which is designed to be adaptable to existing computers and operated by voice commands. This patent is directed to an external device connected solely between the keyboard and the computer, without any other extraneous connections needed for power supply or any other reasons. The patent is also directed towards having software control the priority switch, which enables the keyboard to have priority over voice entries allowing the keyboard input port to upload and download information so that the keyboard is able to be used when connected into the circuit. However, the disclosure does not allow the user to program the user's own voice commands in any language and sent data through the host computer's data bus as in the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,377 to Kuroda et al. is directed towards a speech recognition system having an interface to a host computer bus for direct access to the host memory for accessing the main memory of the personal computer based on fenonic Markov models. The patent is also related to a system capable of performing real time recognition of a large vocabulary by means of a signal processing card packaged on a bus of a personal computer that uses polling fast match and detailed matching.
Thus, the prior art has failed to provide a simple speech recognition system having either an internal or external device comprised of a microcontroller and speech recognition chip that works in conjunction with a software application stored in the RAM memory of the host computer and sends scan codes to the host computer's keyboard port without using digital codes; filtering means; loading or saving programs through keyboard I/O port; and matching based on fenonic Markov models.
Accordingly, the prior art has failed to provide a speech recognition system which is easy to assemble and to install, which does not require additional circuitry such as speech synthesis means, A/D converters, clipping or digital circuitry, preamplifiers, and interfacing with cursor controls, function keys, or loading/saving programs utilizing keyboard I/O ports. More particularly, the prior art has failed to provide a relatively quick, low cost system with a step-by-step process of configuring verbal commands of the user's own voice by utilizing software loaded in the host computer and communicates with the system's ports that requires no additional support and consumes no system's resources during game play.